Science News 11/8/09

Magnetic dreaming
A study published this year found a connection between bizarre dreams, and the Earth's magnetic field. The Perth researcher Darren Lipnicki, recorded his dreams over eight years, and correlated them to extremes in local geomagnetic activity. He recorded 2387 written accounts during his teenage years. He scored is dreams on a bizarreness scale of 1 -5. Dreams that scored a three could happen, but were unlikely. For example: "A friend is in the backyard of my house, building a wooden platform atop of 7-foot high stilts." While 5 on the scale were dreams that Lipnicki had little or no connection with reality: "I was stranded on a foreign coastline with a monkey that spoke English and a woman that suddenly became small, almost doll-sized. Then I was at home." Why would these extremes influence our dreams? According to past studies low geomagnetic activity increases the production of the melatonin, which is a hormone that helps set the body's circadian clock.

You have a snoring face
Earlier this year researchers from the University of Sydney created a new method to analyse digital photographs of faces to determine an individual's risk of developing Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA). Four per cent of Australian middle-aged men and two per cent of middle-aged women suffer from OSA syndrome. The disease is caused by the upper airways closing during periods of interrupted sleep. Previous methods of diagnosis were costly and involved a specialist.

Dreaming the world in black and white
Studies from 1915 to the 1950s suggested that the vast majority of dreams are in black and white. But from the 60s and beyond results suggested that up to 83% of dreams contain some colour. Not so coincidentally in this period there was a from black-and-white film and TV and widespread Technicolor. Eva Murzyn from the University of Dundee, UK found that only 4.4% of the under-25s' dreams were black and white, and the over-55s who'd had access to colour TV and film during their childhood dreamed in monochrome just 7.3% of the time. This is compared to around 25% of the over-55s who had only had access to black-and-white media in their child hood who reported dreaming in black and white. According to Murzyn, eventhough the children would only have spent a few hours a day watching TV or films, because their attention and emotional engagement was increased while they were watching the footage, it would have had a bigger impact on their development.